ONDON (Dow Jones)--U.K. supermarket chain William Morrison Supermarkets PLC (MRW.LN) Wednesday appointed Dalton Philips chief executive of the company from March, replacing Marc Bolland who is leaving to join Marks & Spencer Group PLC (MKS.LN).
The appointment of Philips, 41, who until now was chief operating officer of Canadian food distributor Loblaw Companies Limited, will provide some welcome relief to the market which had fretted about a successor since Bolland was poached to M&S in December after three years at the helm of Morrison.
The U.K.'s fourth-largest supermarket chain has effected a turnaround in the past three years since a difficult integration of its 2004 Safeway acquisition prompted profit warnings and a major strategy shake-up.
Bolland, who is widely credited for at least part of this turnaround in fortunes, has already given up operational responsibility for Morrison but a start date for his new role at M&S has not been confirmed.
A spokesman for Morrison said the company was still negotiating with Bolland over his leaving date. He said Dalton's actual start date in March hadn't been decided.
Dalton wasn't available for comment.
Non-executive chairman Ian Gibson has been running the Morrison executive board in his absence.
Gibson said Wednesday: "I am delighted that Dalton will be joining Morrisons as chief executive. He has a tremendous retail pedigree and a wealth of experience from senior retail positions around the world."
Prior to Loblaw, Philips, an Irish national, was chief executive of Irish department store group, Brown Thomas, and has held several positions in Wal-Mart Co. Inc's (WMT) international division.
"To a certain extent this man seems to have come out of nowhere, certainly he won't be familiar to most of the UK food retail analysts but I'm sure Morrison has done an extremely comprehensive job in terms of assessing him and recruiting him.," said Charles Stanley analyst Sam Hart.
He believes Philips is likely to review whether to expand Morrison's non-food offering, given most of its bigger rivals already have a bigger presence, and whether to sell goods online. Hart has an accumulate rating on Morrison.
Morrison last week reported same-store sales growth of 6.5% in recent weeks, the best performance of all the U.K. supermarkets, as it continues to push its fresh food lines.
At 1632 GMT, Morrison shares were down 0.54% or 2p at 293p.
By Kathy Gordon, Dow Jones Newswires; 44-207-842-9293; kathy.gordon@dowjones.com |
